


And the darkness knows

by mneiai



Series: mneiai's Spooky Week [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: (minor because this fandom gets super extreme about it), (sort of), Challenge Response, Dark, Dreams and Nightmares, Kidnapping, Minor Mind Rape, No beta we die like younglings, Non-Consensual Touching, Other, Sith Shrine, Tentacles, listen you read the ship you saw the 'tentacles' tag, you know what you're signing up for is going to be weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:07:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27231730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mneiai/pseuds/mneiai
Summary: Every Jedi has nightmares of the Dark growing up. Maybe some of them are true.
Relationships: The Dark Side/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: mneiai's Spooky Week [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985102
Comments: 13
Kudos: 174
Collections: Spooky Wars Week





	And the darkness knows

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 3 of Spooky Wars: "A Haunted Planet"
> 
> If you're into dark shit happening to Obi-Wan, check are [The Force's Favorite](https://discord.gg/YrsandN), a discord for Obi-Wan and dark stuff.

Every Jedi had _those_ dreams--the ones of the Darkside coming to get them, of tendrils of shadow reaching out for them. It was just part of learning what the Force even was. They, for the most part, grew out of them quickly and put them aside as they came to realize how silly they were.

Obi-Wan’s had stuck around an embarrassingly long time. Long after his crechemates had moved on, he’d awaken in the dark, huddling under his covers. He could still envision them sometimes, the Dark reaching up out of the floor of the Temple, sliding over the younglings in the room, latching on.

For years he’d had the dreams, and for years he’d ignored them as best as he could, hiding the fact that some nights he barely slept at all (a skill that would serve him well in his years with Qui-Gon and during the war).

He’d known it was just tales of the Dark side scaring him, but he’d been young and let his fear influence him too much. It was really no wonder he was known for being somewhat volatile well into his teens.

It hadn’t stopped him from, tentatively, asking Anakin if he had any bad dreams when he moved into the Temple. Anakin had denied it, though Obi-Wan was never sure if he was telling the truth or was old enough not to want to tell any adult about nightmares, especially one he had barely known at the time.

Instead, he had convinced Anakin to see a mindhealer at least a few times, hoping they could teach Anakin what they’d taught Obi-Wan--that the dreams meant nothing.

When he returned from Mortis--the planet hanging over him like a fog only he could see or feel, clinging to his skin as though he’d never get clean of it--the dreams started again.

He was lying in his bed and it came for him, tendrils slipping up from someone deep, deep below, sliding through his room. Their touch was the freeze of the Dark, the anger/fear/lust that had wafted from the Son at all moments. 

Obi-Wan had pulled away, in the dream, pushing out with the Force even as he wrapped the Light tighter around himself. The Dark had been confused enough it echoed through Obi-Wan’s own mind--it had done this, been doing this, for so long without a fight from Obi-Wan that the sudden resistance made it break off and retreat.

Just from his room.

Not sure if he was awake or still dreaming, he stumbled down the hallways of the Temple, feeling its presence in nearly every room with a Jedi occupant. Even in the creche, though he couldn’t see it with his physical eyes, he could _feel_ it.

The Darkside was here, in the Temple. In them.

It wasn’t some cloud hanging over Coruscant, some ambiguous magic just to block them out.

Something was feeding off of them.

***

In the light of day, he managed to convince himself it was just a very disturbing dream. And why not? He’d gone through so much recently, eventually it had to be too much for just meditation to take care of. His unconscious was now trying to relieve him of some of the burdens.

The Dark of the war, of the lurking Sith, _had_ infected all of them. Even the younglings were stressed and fearful in ways they had never been when he was that age.

The lies he told himself worked so well, he was almost surprised when the exact dream returned the next night.

Waking in the middle of a hallway on the other side of the Temple either proved the dreams to be some form of truth or that he was now sleepwalking. He would much prefer the latter.

But the habit was made and, despite himself, he “followed” the presence in his dreams every night. It noticed him, sometimes, dancing just out of reach, seeming to laugh at him with a discordant tone of so, so many voices trapped in one. The tendrils of darkness caressed, but never latched on, never did...whatever it was to him that they were doing to the others (not anymore, at least, for he suspected that for years he’d been as unaware as everyone else).

When he woke, he would record everything he saw, everything he felt. He’d go to those parts of the Temple--where something had been out of place, where someone had carved initials into a tree--and find the details that he _hadn’t known_ before the “dream.”

Until, despite everything, he knew it was real.

***

If he told the Council, they’d think the war had finally broken him.

No one, _no one_ treated the dreams as real. The only references he’d found to the phenomenon in the Archives was as derisive of it as every person who had ever spoken to Obi-Wan about them.

When Anakin and Ahsoka returned, he’d have his confirmation. But they kept getting delayed and his own time on Coruscant was growing ever shorter.

He had to do _something_.

Obi-Wan researched everything he could about resisting the Dark side, especially its manifestations, and prepared himself. That night, he didn’t fall asleep, he dipped in and out of a moving meditation, following the path of the Darkness down, down.

Only his Council codes gave him access to some of the levels he had to walk through, only his experience in battle meditation let him continue feeling that Dark presence while working his way through some of the floors that were in complete disrepair without reaching for a light. 

The doorway he found, carved with Sith runes and glowing faintly red in the pitch black of the room. 

Some spell or perhaps just the pervasive wrongness of it tried to deter him, but he pushed forward, through, until the path opened into a huge space.

He lit his lightsaber, the shadows cringing from the blue glow. Around him were statues, walls carved with reliefs, a mosaic floor under his feet glowed red at intervals, but was otherwise a shining black.

It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Obi-Wan circled the edges of the room, trying to look for any runes he recognized. Ironic, that he almost wished he could reach out to Dooku somehow, with holos or etchings to be translated.

Somehow he’d been drawn inward, not even noticing that his circle had become a spiral until he was in the very center of the room, looking down at the carvings in the floor.

The shadows shifted, his lightsaber gave a shocking sputter, and there was a draft that tore Obi-Wan’s attention away, upwards, to the mass of Darkness that had gathered above him (had been there the whole time?).

It seethed and writhed against itself, a black sea of tendrils.

When it reached for him, he managed to bat some away with his saber, holding out his free hand in front of him to create a Force barrier. Backing away towards the entrance he’d come through, he knew his only option was to run.

But his back hit nothing but solid stone where there had been an opening.

~Little Jedi,~ the Darkness whispered, perhaps into his ears, perhaps into his mind itself. ~Why fear us? You have fed us so well.~

Gathering himself, Obi-Wan tried his best to put forward a casual front, shields locked as tightly as they could be. “Oh? Surely one Jedi doesn’t stand out against all the others.”

It laughed, the sound felt like needles pricking along Obi-Wan’s spine. ~Do you think you’re not special, little Jedi? Do you think the focus of our living brethren is a coincidence?~

The tendrils creeped around him, closing in like a stalking predator.

“Your brethren?” One slipped from the pack, brushing against his legging-clad leg, drawing out a full-body shudder from him.

“Those who will one day become One with us.”

“One with you?" He was having a hard time controlling his breathing and heart rate, panic trying to eat away at the edges of his composure.

"Do only little Jedi go into the Force?"

There was a Lightside nexus somewhere nearby, but in this room so clearly made by the Sith, all Obi-Wan felt was the Dark. Before Mortis, what this _thing_ was suggesting would have seemed impossible.

Now….

"The Sith, you're speaking of the Sith. You're…." The spirits of dead Sith, he didn't say, didn't want to speak that into being if untrue.

How had no one ever noticed? How long had this been going on?

(How had this affected the Order?)

"So smart, for a Jedi," it--they--it purred, pressing closer, more tendrils slipping through Obi-Wan's shields as his horror made them weaker to the Dark.

Obi-Wan gave a full body shudder. "What do you want?"

"You sought us out, you wanted to find us, wanted to know us."

There were so many, too many, the press of them on his body and mind overwhelming. Somewhere beside him, his lightsaber still glowed, just enough to let his eyes see what his other senses knew were there.

"Not for--I just wanted to know what was happening, I didn't--"

They shushed him, flowing across his lips, and he held his mouth shut as he realized what they could try. Not that his body mattered much, when they were already squirming through his cracking shields, penetrating parts of him far more intimate than his raw matter.

“You placed yourselves like a banquet before us, you feed the Dark, give us bits and pieces of yourselves.” The explanation was everything that Obi-Wan feared and he was sure that was the only reason he was being told. “You felt us so much more than most, knew us despite the lies the other Jedi said. Until you didn’t.”

The tendrils slithered over every part of him, until he could feel nothing but the cold. He had to squeeze his eyes shut when they covered the rest of his face, yearning for the flickering blue of his lightsaber.

"No more war down here, little Jedi, no more responsibilities. Just us. And you." It laughed, the noise against his ears and its pleasure in his mind making Obi-Wan's body seize. "And someday, you will be us, too."


End file.
